Shonda Rhimes, American screenwriter, director and producer, best known as the creator, head writer, and executive producer of the medical drama television series Grey's Anatomy and its spin-off Private Practice.

What Happens When Media Lacks Women, Minority Voices?

Women are vastly underrepresented in media, the percentage of women of color in newsrooms is declining and quotes and opinions that appear in content are still overwhelmingly attributed to white men, according to a new study by the Women’s Media Center.

According to the study, "2014 Status of Women in the US Media Report," released on Feb. 19, two-thirds of U.S. daily newspaper staffs are still men and in newsrooms overall, only 12 percent of employees are minorities.

This disparity is particularly pronounced in the world of sports journalism, where 90 percent of sports editors are white men and only 14.6 percent of the staff at sports news outlets are women.

A related study indicates that men were quoted almost four times more than women on a typical New York Times front page, between January and February last year.

The figures indicate that diversity gains made in recent decades may be slipping, especially, if one considers that women are coming out of journalism at much higher rates than men.

“To the extent that these higher rates of women journalism graduates represent in leadership positions in media, you could say that women are losing ground,” said Kelly McBride, senior faculty for ethics at the Poynter Institute.

McBride, who is also co-editor of the recently released book, "The New Ethics of Journalism," said there are many reasons women don’t succeed in newsrooms, among them a bias placed on male writers over female writers.

“If you look at some of the pinnacle publications like the New Yorker or Wired magazine, you see male bylines much greater rate than female bylines,” she said.

Another key reason, she said, is that when newsrooms across the country are uniformly male, there just isn’t an urgency to change.

“Men are controlling the decisions, and it’s not a priority for them to diversify,” she said.

What are the effects of gender discrimination in media on the overall media landscape and on society in general?

Ultimately it affects the content, said McBride.

“If you don’t have diversity in the staff that creates the content, they’re not going to think of the ideas; they’re not going to contact the sources … (and) we don’t discuss issues that might be important to people who are not white men," she said.

As a result, she adds, people don’t see professional experts who aren't white men quoted in stories.

“So, it really plays out in this ripple effect to significant consequence to the entire society,” she said.

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